Saturday Secret...

I've got a secret and it's something good!

Some clues are ....

It involves a prize for one lucky person.

It's connected to something that was featured on my blog last week.

and it involves my followers and the comments they make.

OOOOOoooooooooh bet that has got you thinking if you happen to be passing by and reading this.

All will be revealed tomorrow.

An abundance of cards...

Three cards on display today so I better not ramble on too much about any of them! My first card is made using that oh so cute stamp set from Your Next Stamp , our sponsors at The Pink Elephant this week. If you haven't had chance to enter our challenge yet do try over the weekend as the prizes are just gorgeous.

Now if you remember a certain member of the design team (me)wasn't paying attention when she read the details for the challenge and went a little bit wrong!! So to make amends (and have some fun) here is my second attempt with...

dots (cuttlebugged Swiss Dots), punches (circles and snowflakes) and tag (hiding under the ribbon)

The front of the card features the large penguin stamp and inside there is Fhiona pulling him on his sledge. Both the large penguin on the front and Fhiona are included in the stamp set with some snowflakes too, which I didn't get round to using on this card.

My card is also for the challenges at...

Pollycraft - spots and snowflakes (still working on the card that contains all five attributes!)
A Spoon Full of Sugar - Christmas
My Time to Craft - snow buddies
ABC Challenge - embossing

My next two cards have been made really quickly using Kanban materials. I've promised to help raise some cash for Sheffield Children's Hospital by selling some cards at a Christmas fair organised by a friend. So I need to get a bit of a production line going and mass produce - not me at all, but needs must!

Anyway first two done and dusted thanks to Kanban and also to Fab at Fab's Big Christmas Card Challenge. Gosh I hadn't realised until I went to his blog to collect the link that I have used exactly the same image and background as him for my cards - great minds think alike heh?

Fab's challenge this week is to use green and (if possible) to make more than one. Great idea for getting those cards done ready for Christmas. It's getting closer!!

Hope you like today's cards and thanks again for the really lovely comments being left for me. Have a fantastic weekend and see you Monday for the new Pink Elephant challenge. I will try to do it correctly this week.

Christmas Snow Buddies...

I do hope nobody is tired of seeing Messy Rabbit yet!!

This time my card is a scenic one, where Messy is playing out with his Snowman buddy underneath the 'Merry Christmas' signpost.

I created the scene using several different stamps...

the signpost is the lower part of the Flower Soft unmounted lamp post
the door is by Dimension Fourth
the wreath (on shrink plastic) and Messy with Snowman buddy are by Joanna Sheen.

I built the whole scene up on a 8" x 8" base card. The brick patterned background was created using a Fiskar's embossing plate run through my wizard and then touched up with a hand embossing too on areas that had not been embossed as clearly as I would have liked.

The door was stamped on very light brown coloured card and then I coloured some areas deeper using Promarkers. A gold brad forms the door handle and the edge of a peel off sheet was cut to form the letter box.

The wreath is one of the stamps from the new Messy Rabbit Christmas range by Joanna Sheen and luckily when shrunk down it was the perfect size to hang on the door.


I decided to really go for it and have the door opening with a Christmas message inside.

The card's inner has a Christmas greeting printed on it and using the stamps again and masks I created another picture of Messy and the lamp posts. This card certainly kept me out of mischief for longer than most!!!


Luckily my card fits in with quite a few challenges this week...

A Spoon Full of Sugar - Christmas
My Time to Craft - Snow Buddies
La-La Land Crafts - embossing
ABC Challenge - embossing

Thank you once again for looking and leaving such amazing comments. I've been blown away by them this week. Have a great day everyone.

Happy Anniversary...70 years!!!

Seventy years- oh my goodness can you imagine that? I've not even heard of anyone celebrating so many years together before, never mind been asked to make a card for the event.

Amazing! Apparently both husband and wife are in their 90s and fit as fiddles. Isn't that just wonderful? The husband says that he wakes up every morning and says a little prayer that he will make to their anniversary. I so hope he does.

I was asked to make the card by my mum's neighbour. I must admit I was a little hurt when she admitted to looking all round the shops first and couldn't find one with 70 on so came to me. However, all is forgiven now as she started crying when she saw the card, because as she said 'It is so beautiful'. Ah, how lovely is that?

Makes all the wasted paper yesterday (I wasn't in the mood and did everything wrong) and extra grey hairs worthwhile.

The card is 8" x 8" as I thought this particularly event needed something special. The hearts are peel offs stuck on the beautiful roses paper which I believe my friend Irene gave me some time ago. Think it is an Anna Griffin design, but I'm not sure. After cutting the hearts out I attached them to the vellum which overlays more of the rose bud paper. I love the effect of vellum over a patterned paper - such a gentleness to it.

As I have trimmed my card with ribbon and gold peel offs it is suitable for the challenge at Die Cut Dreams where this week the team are asking to see ribbons and trims.

Just discovered that the challenge at Creative Inspirations is Numbers and letters so just incase I don't get chance to do another card for that challenge I'm entering this one. Do check their challenge out though - some gorgeous work from the design team and their guest designer Torico.

Thank you so much for looking and for the lovely comments I have received this week. I do appreciate them.

Autumnal Hoot...

This is 'Hoot' the fantastic new charactic in Joanna Sheen's range of stamps. Isn't he cute? There are 12 stamps in total in the range and this is one of the six I was lucky enough to be given to work with.

I decided to go with an autumnal feel and pulled out some leafy paper from one of my DCWV packs for the background. I stamped Hoot on a circle of Bristol board and matted this on to orange card. Then I made a border of leaves all around the circle. These were cut on my Cricut and are in two layers. The orange layer is a whole leaf and the green a sort of half skeleton layer which was matted on top. Yep, it took quite a while to do, but it kept me out of mischief!

I've just realised it's a similar idea to the snowflake card I did yesterday, but I actually did this card way before I saw Sandra's snowflake one.

The ribbon and image are all coloured using Promarkers. I added a 'get well soon' tag and small green brads to each corner for added interest.

With it's autumnal feel my card is perfect for quite a few of the challenges this week...

My time to Craft - Autumn Fest (eeeeeeeeek only just in time and then only if the challenge is late being changed!)
Creative Inspirations - Autumn
No time to stamp - Autumn Leaves
Allsorts - Autumn Days
Secret Crafter - Animal Antics (well Hoot has certainly been up to something to break his wing)

Thank you for looking and for any kind comments. I do appreciate them all and have had many of my days brightened by your really kind words. Thank you so much.

Pink Elephant Day...

This week it's recipe time at The Pink Elephant and Ella wants us to use dots, tags and punches.

Well you would think that members of the design team would get it right wouldn't you, but a certain member (okay it was me) got so excited about using the fantastic image from Your Next Stamp and making a shaker card again with that fantastic Diamond Dust that the recipe went completely out of my head. What am I like?


Anyway all was not lost as I had already used a snowflake punch for my abundance of snowflakes. I managed to squeeze a tag into the act and okay this might be pushing my luck, but the diamond centres to the snowflakes could so easily be counted as dots couldn't they? Say yes, please!

Actually for this design I need to thank Sandra Dry for her inspiration. I saw one of her fantastic cards with a snowflake border and I just thought wow that would work so well around the apperture of a shaker card. I don't know about you, but I often think shaker cards can look a little rough around the edges so what a great way to mask that by using snow flakes.

You can see Sandra's fabulous card HERE. Thank you so much for sharing your amazing ideas
Sandra.

My image is Fhiona and Friend penguin, which I coloured using Promarkers. There is also a cute little button with Penguin on in this set of stamps. I must use that the next time I use this stamp - it's just so cute.

I do hope lots of people will join us at The Pink Elephant this week. It really is so great to visit everyone's blog and be inspired by the amazing talent out there in blog land.